


Better a Fire than a Spider

by atomiccourier



Series: Atom I.C. Courier [5]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Gen, mentions of fire/arson, mentions of violence/death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-06-05 13:14:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6705769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atomiccourier/pseuds/atomiccourier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Atom wonders why some people hate him so much. It's really not his fault that he's a liar, you see. It's all the Legion's fault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Better a Fire than a Spider

You wonder why they compare you to fire.

 

It’s not the most confusing thing. The red of your hair, and the underside of your coat and hat, flapping in the morning sunlight can make quite the image. What kind of connotation that image has is up to the watcher. Benevolent, or malevolent.

 

You can understand why the Legion may call you fire. It would be silly if you couldn't, while you stand here on their soil, slaughtering their troops. Your influence is as good as fire to them. You ravage through them like a wildfire, leaving no attacker as anything but a crisp.

 

Or, your securitrons do. War is what they’re most useful for. Better than arresting innocent civilians trying to make a living in this dry wasteland.

 

They are dry. You wonder why they do not burn as much as these lovely folks, if you are really fire to them.

 

You ponder the differences between the Legion and New Vegas. A conversation comes to surface. That’s rare. It must be important.

 

No, it’s not a full conversation. It’s an overheard comment.

 

“Guy pities the Legion. They know what to expect. Anyone else, his friends ‘specially, are in the most danger.”

 

You tilt your head. Thoughtful eyes no longer a balanced line across the raging, burning, screaming battlefield that surrounds you. Diagonal, unusual, wrong.

 

The Legion expects you. Your tactics are always head on. You can’t remember a single time you actually had a conversation with one, though that could be just you. You don’t manipulate them. You don’t lie to them. You kill them. That’s all the business you have with the legion. That’s all they know you as. A killer. A force of nature. A natural disaster. A fire.

 

An assassin has made his way up the hill towards you. Yes Man mows him down. They’re just tinder to your flame.

 

“If he calls you his friend, better watch out. He’s lyin’”

 

You’d be a liar to your core if you had one. Layer upon layer of fabrications to hide the emptiness within. You’re nothing but a mask to hide a lack of self. You talk your way out of and into things like a locksmith down a hallway of locked doors. You just have to find the right combination to let you through. You have a lockpick of 100.

 

You talk because it’s the easiest thing to do, because fighting meant pain and your touch receptors are ten times as receptive as anyone else’s, because it’s how things are supposed to work. Because it’s logic. Because it’s true.

 

Morality is something you’re only beginning to understand. The “Messiah” in your pip-boy is not you, it’s a coincidence. It’s easier to walk past a guarded room than steal everything inside. It’s easier to save a family when your companions will leave your sorry ass if you don’t. It’s easier to be nice, most of the time. It wasn’t in Zion.

 

Maybe that’s why Zion makes your chest ache.

 

You’re a candle being passed along a line of people. If you’re squeezed too tightly, it’s easier to lash out at the person than continue with the ongoing squeeze, even if you risk being dropped. There’s an entire line of people behind you that would be willing to catch you anyway.

 

“The people that’ve been his so called friends have suffered th’ most.”

 

When you became associated with the Gomorrah, making the old bosses turn on each other implementing a new boss, you’d been hailed by the staff. That relationship took a sharp turn when you kicked  _ that  _ boss out and started setting up  _ actual laws  _ to protect the workers. Gomorrah is the only place you have formal laws. It was also the first set of hands you burnt.

 

You’d begun to form associations with other businesses in the area. Many of these went the same way. You kicked out Crimson Caravans and reimplemented Cassidy Caravans. You kicked out The Silver Rush and made their building into a donations center. Et cetera et cetera. Burnt hand after burnt hand.

 

You look down upon the war cries below, and raise your eyes to the pillars of smoke above, where they trail off, wind carrying them toward your golden city. 

 

“That man’s a wildfire. He’ll smoke out every damn business that won’t serve him on a silver platter and leave us capless.”

 

You decide you’d rather be a fire than a spider, suspended on a web held up by traitorous branches.

 

“Bastard’ll burn himself out before any other lucky fuck gets a chance. Just you wait.”

 

You’ll be damned if the person that kills you is anyone but yourself.

**Author's Note:**

> I really just wrote this to get my muse up because it's been a few days. 
> 
> Don't worry, I won't make an entire series about some sarcastic, sad fellow thinking about himself and being really self-pitying. 
> 
> Maybe soon we'll figure out the identity of the rnarrator. I'll see what I can do.


End file.
